Foreign Relations

The national identity gap between China and the United States has become increasingly apparent. Under Xi Jinping, China has sought to reclaim its historical greatness and proclaimed itself to be…

KEI’s 2021 Report on American Attitudes on the U.S.-ROK Alliance and North Korea Policy summarizes results from a survey commissioned by KEI and conducted by YouGov on May 6th to…

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s New Southern Policy (NSP)—the most recent effort by Seoul to boost relations with Southeast Asian countries and India and diversify its relationships beyond four major…

This paper addresses the U.S.-South Korea alliance in the context of Asia’s evolving security architecture. At the crux of the issue is the Biden administration’s desire to uphold the rules-based…

In this series, S. Nathan Park examined the much-caricatured South Korean liberal foreign policy outlook. Far from being “anti-American” and “pro-Pyongyang,” Seoul’s liberal administrations have responded forcefully against provocations from the North and bolstered the alliance with the United States through military deployments abroad and a bilateral free trade agreement. Reflecting their reading of Korea’s…

In the previous article, S. Nathan Park examined how South Korea’s fractious political history birthed the country’s liberals and their foreign policy outlook. He observed that many in DC’s foreign policy circles view liberal administrations as anti-American and submissive to North Korea because the center-left political movement was initially mobilized in opposition to the anti-communist,…

The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on April 7 to question President Joseph Biden’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Ambassador Philip S. Goldberg.  Goldberg is one of four ambassadorial nominees who testified before the Foreign Relations Committee on April 7.  Two of the four nominees, including Goldberg, are senior…

President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol initially announced his plan to dispatch special envoys to only the United States and EU before his inauguration. This excluded China, Japan, and Russia where previous incoming administrations had traditionally deployed representatives. Although additional envoys to Japan and China were ultimately announced after criticism from the former UN Secretary-General, the incident may…